The new Singtel logo unveiled on Wednesday has created quite a buzz. it also came with a new slogan “Let’s make everyday better”, and new service commitments by the telco. The rebranding and logo – the first in 16 years – were conceptualised by creative agency Ogilvy and Mather. The logo and slogan did not get the best reception online, it seems.

…Entrepreneur Calixto Tay wrote in Alvinology.com that the “new logo isn’t making too much sense”, and even asked two designers to come up with some new ones. Those by designer Jeremy Kieran featured the ‘T’ in negative space, and in one, it was made to look like an upward arrow.

There was some discussion as to whether the slogan was grammatical, and Facebook user Sergio Gs IIo wrote: “there is an even worse error: it should have been ‘everyday better-lah.

The contentious issue here is whether the word ‘everyday’ is appropriate, since strictly speaking it should be ‘make every day better’. The conjoined ‘everyday’ is usually used as a adjective to describe the humdrum, the banal, the common, like our ‘everyday life’, ‘everyday people’ or ‘everyday heroes’. If Singtel had capitalised the word (Everyday) to imply that they’re using it as a noun in this instance, people would probably complain less vehemently. I assume these are the same people who lose sleep over LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem (EVERYDAY I’m Shufflin’).

Most people don’t bother to split the term in, well, ‘everyday’ conversation through email or messaging, and for practical purposes the two have become somewhat interchangeable, just like how we’ve learned to live with ‘someday’ rather than ‘some day’. Not every body, I mean EVERYBODY, has the time or patience to nitpick between the two.

So either this is a genuine case of grammatical oversight, or a deliberate marketing gimmick of using an adjective as a noun. Like ‘Think Different’, ‘Spread Happy’, ‘Imagine Extraordinary’, or the song titles ‘Beneath your Beautiful’ and ‘Excuse My Rude’, except this one’s less obvious and rolls off easier on the tongue. Singtel were quick to defend the slogan as referring to the ‘day-to-day’ things that matter to customers, but ‘Let’s make your day-to-day experience better’ just sounds terrible.

Some marketing folks do believe that the logo is an improvement, especially when the font has been changed from the previous ‘Time New Roman-esque’ typeface. The ‘t’, interestingly, not only has been downsized to small caps, but even has a funky incomplete stroke at the tip, almost resembling the side profile of a Jurassic-era phone receiver. If anyone continues to grumble about the new logo, which has 5 sprightly red dots in some kind of planetary trajectory, I’d be happy to refer them to the one proposed for our new National Gallery as a comparison. The ‘planet’ reference is fitting nonetheless, considering that there are times, in the train tunnel especially, when the 4G connection is literally ‘out of this world’.

Poet Grace Chia, whose poetry collection Cordelia was shortlisted for this year’s Singapore Literature Prize in the English poetry section, has strongly voiced her concerns over the apparent sidelining of women’s writing, saying that the results have left her “silenced into shock“.

The prize was awarded jointly to poets Joshua Ip and Yong Shu Hoong for their collections on Tuesday evening. The other poets on the shortlist were Tania De Rozario, who had previously won the 2011 Golden Point Award for English Poetry, Koh Jee Leong and Theophilus Kwek.

Chia wrote in a public post on the Junoesq Literary Journal’s Facebook page on Wednesday night: “The fact that the prize has been given to two co-winners who are both male poets is deeply informing of choice, taste and affirmation. A prize so coveted that it has been apportioned to two male narratives of poetic discourse, instead of one outstanding poet – reeks of an engendered privilege that continues to plague this nation’s literary community.”

If Ms Chia were indeed ‘silenced into shock’, she wouldn’t be complaining about literary sexism in a Facebook post. What does ‘deeply informing of choice, taste and affirmation’ even mean? Allow me to ‘poetise’ her sweeping rant with a poem of my own.

Cordelia didn’t win Having 2 guys win is a sinI’m stunned, I’m muteIs it cos I’m too cute?The pen is mightier than the swordBut mine failed to get me that awardProse by ladies ain’t worth a dimeEspecially if they were made to rhymeGuys I challenge thee to a poetry slamAnd make sure you say ‘Sorry ma’am’I’m a women poet hear me roarImma call out this gender bias to settle the score

Though I have to admit I can’t for the life of me name a single female (or male) local poet, it’s probably unfair for Grace to claim that this bias ‘plagues the nation’s literary community’. Some of the best writers in this country are women, whether they be bustin’ rhymes or getting into trouble with politicians as a sideline (Catherine Lim). Poetry, however, seems predominantly male-dominated. A sensitive question to ask then, would be whether men are naturally BETTER at poetry than women. That would also explain why there are more male rappers than female, but it would incur the wrath of feminists waving the gender equality flag who think women are equally good, if not better drivers than men. Or maybe it’s a statistical fluke because so few people even want to venture into poetry in the first place.

I’d hate to think that poetry is a dying trade here. They’re probably more people listening to cassette tapes and gramophones than reading poetry, and I admire writers who have no qualms about introducing themselves as ‘poets’. Most people would imagine them as solitary bards strolling under the moonlight twirling their hands in long flowing robes creating sonnets on the go, or emo teens penning down melancholic verse on their blogs while contemplating suicide. The only thing more lofty-sounding than ‘poet’ is probably ‘sonnetist’. You can’t survive in Singapore without being a multi-hyphenate if you want to specialise in poetry. In Grace’s bibliography, she is credited with other publications, including Silver Kris, SIA’s inflight mag, and curiously, Success in Real Estate (Vol III).

There’s also this piece by Edwin Thumboo that’s apparently lauded as Singapore’s ‘MOST FAMOUS POEM’, called Ulysses by the Merlion. No I haven’t heard of it either. Ask a random Singaporean to quote a piece of poetry and they’ll struggle to come up with anything other than ‘Rose are Red, Violets are Blue’. Maybe we’re just too lazy to memorise anything lyrical outside of Kpop songs. In Korean.

Or maybe this is a ruse to get people to read ‘Cordelia’. This is a sample of how the online blurb describes the poet and her work, some of the reviews by critics lively enough to be poetry themselves:

‘…EXCAVATES from the imagery of life..': What is this, a manual for grave-digging?

‘(Her voice) lingers with a satisfying PIQUANCY long after it’s heard': MMMM..Piquancy..

A FRESH coat of paint usually brings cheer, but a splash of colour on Bishan’s beloved red-brick flats has upset some people instead. Some terracotta housing blocks, like those in Bishan Streets 22 and 24, will be doused in a medley of colours, with combinations such as grey, silver and golden yellow, as part of ongoing repairs by the area’s town council.

But the mishmash of colours has upset some residents, architects and heritage experts. Architectural and urban historian Lai Chee Kien said the paint job will change the feature of an estate known for its red-brick facade. “Red-brick panels and bands were probably chosen by the estate’s original architects to present a common, unifying aesthetic identity. Today’s town councils must look at this from a larger scale and keep the entire town in mind when making these changes,” he added.

…At Blocks 201 to 219 in Street 23, residents were presented earlier this year with three colour palettes starkly different from the original. They included a pink and purple combination.

Resident Charlene Koh, 27, a designer, was upset. “The rows of red-brick blocks evoke a sense of warmth… They are iconic and distinct. I don’t want to look out my window and see a horrible colour on the next block.”

HDB’s palette used to be restricted to neutral tones of grey, white or brown, but in the eighties some designers decided to boldly go where no bureaucrat has gone before, add a PRIMARY colour to the mix. Red, however, was considered too ‘loud’, and you don’t want a colour that’s universally associated with rage splashed all over your flat. Nor do you want to drop random stripey rainbow colours and end up looking like a rastacap, or some kid’s toy xylophone.

I personally don’t really care what colour scheme my block has unless it’s a genuine eyesore, like yellow polka dots. Some stark combinations like Rochor’s foursome of bright red, blue, yellow and green have become recognisable icons (though rated as one of the ‘worst buildings in Singapore’ by CNN), while others betray a dismal lack of imagination, or if they have no idea what colour to douse your house in, they add an orchid mural, or a giant Cupid. Overdo the cuteness and you’ll have people mistaking your block for a multi-storey kindergarten, especially if it has rainbows splashed all over it.

There’s even an FAQ on the Bishan Town Council page to address ‘awful colours’. The response is typical.

What ‘experts’, exactly HDB? Are they the brains behind the Teletubbies? Maybe they’re psychologists who specialise in colour-mood matching who’ve done extensive research to determine what are the best colour combinations to lull HDB dwellers into a state of passive obedience. Granted, you can’t get two people to agree on a preferred colour scheme, might as well choose a combination scientifically proven to stop people from leaping to their deaths.

Here’s a quick list of things that HDB’s ugly colour combinations have been compared to:

From ‘Kill stray cats’ flyer taken out of context’, 1 Sept 2014, article in CNA

Flyers reportedly urging people to “kill stray cats”, which earned the ire of animal welfare groups and online readers over the weekend, were revealed to be taken out of context, TODAY reports. It was part of a satirical performance-exhibition against evil acts by art collective Vertical Submarine, which was commissioned by the Singapore Kindness Movement (SKM) for the recently concluded Singapore Night Festival.

The art collective issued a statement on its Facebook page clarifying the flyer — of which an image of a sample circulated on social media on Sunday — was taken out of context and was part of a series of flyers highlighting other similarly evil actions as part of the piece Eville.

“The flyers were not distributed to the public for the purpose of advocacy but scattered as part of the performance. We do not advocate or condone the killing of stray cats. On the contrary, we are pleased that the issue of cat abuse is highlighted,” said the group’s statement.

…The flyer on stray cats explains how “charitable elderly lonely widows” spend a total of S$6.6m on cat food and supplies, which could be spent on themselves. These were signed by a so-called Red Herring Conservation Society. The term “red herring” is an idiom referring to something that distracts or misleads people from important issues.

In the statement, Vertical Submarine added: “As part of the Eville exhibition at the Singapore Night Festival, the flyers and other Eville exhibits explore the theme of evilness and depict several acts of evil happening in our society. Satirical didactics were used throughout the show with the intention to provoke reflection within the arch of the Eville exhibition. The flyers were one such device and this would have been clear if the exhibition had been viewed in its entirety, rather than looking at one flyer outside of its context.”

If the flyer had read ‘KILL ALL HUMANS’, it probably wouldn’t get as much attention, though that is just about the most evil thing anyone can do. ‘Satirical didactics’ is an excuse for something that wasn’t very ingenious or witty to begin with, and ended up slightly more serious than satirical, like a New Nation article about PM Lee unfriending his Indonesian counterpart on Facebook. No cats were harmed in the exhibition, of course. Though many butterflies had to die for someone else’s gruesome piece of taxidermal ‘art’ some years back.

Not sure why the Singapore Kindness Movement got involved in macabre performance art of all things, or maybe they just ran out of things to do after the departure of Singa the Lion (who also happens to be a member of the cat family). Cat abuse doesn’t need highlighting, really. We’ve read enough high-profile, grisly stories of how cats are mutilated, disembowelled or thrown 10 storeys off HDB blocks. To hide an anti-abuse message that we’re used to experiencing on a sickeningly visceral level behind an obtuse ‘context’ isn’t helping matters at all. In fact, it even seems patronising. By resorting to headscratching ‘schlock’ tactics, the arts collective responsible did exactly what a ‘vertical submarine’ would do. Sink to a new low.

Here’s the reason why the joke isn’t funny anymore. In 1952, the government declared all out WAR on stray dogs and cats during the rabies frenzy, issuing ‘shoot to kill’ orders and screening ‘propaganda’ films to alert the public against this vermin scourge. In 2007, it was reported that the AVA kills 13,000 stray cats every year, replying to animal lovers that culling was a ‘necessary sin’. Some residents even complained to their Town Council that they were ‘afraid of cats’ and wanted them put away. If Eville intended to raise ‘awareness’ about unnecessary animal deaths, they should target the government agencies who are the real culprits behind this secret kitty genocide, rather than bring up ‘elderly lonely widows’ (or ‘crazy cat ladies’, which is also a case of lazy stereotyping).

So yes, we already know there are people killing strays out there. What’s really scary is that some are doing it as part of the job and they call the slaughter by a different name. Now let us all enjoy this clip of Maru jumping into random boxes.

Mr Tan Jee Say, former presidential candidate, has announced the formation of a new political party, Singaporeans First, which pledges to put “Singaporeans at the heart of the nation“. At a press conference today (May 25), Mr Tan announced the formation of the party and unveiled his founding man team, which include ex-grassroot leaders, architects and former members of the Young PAP.

Of his team, eight have formerly worked in government agencies, seven are scholarship holders, and three are former PAP activists, Mr Tan said.

…Mr Tan said that Singaporeans First aims to be different from other political parties by focusing on specifics, such as the economy. “We also have the advantage of someone like me who knows a lot more about the economy,” he said.

This is Heartcore

The Singaporeans First logo looks familiar. Tan Jee Say himself used a heart logo during his 2011 presidential election campaign. He also wanted to be the ‘heart of the nation’. It’s obvious who in the party is the brainchild behind the logo.

Some have called it a ripoff of the Walls Ice cream logo. Maybe because like ice cream, the universal symbol of the heart is soft and mushy, and the party wants to swaddle you with hugs and kisses, unlike the ruling party’s harsh lightning bolt of Zeus. I think it’s more likely that it was inspired by the Care Bears. So much love. Incidentally, ‘Heart’ is also a key word of a blog that specialises in debunking the CPF, which should go right up Jee Say’s alley. That website is Heart Truths by none other than Roy Ngerng. Potential candidate, maybe?

Tan Jee Say ‘bears all’ with his new party

Or perhaps it’s a smart choice designed with ingenuity and foresight. If this party ever runs for the next elections, you could even pull this off in your promotional material. Hey Jee Say, how about hiring me as campaign manager?

Here are some interesting facts about some of the more prolific members of Jee Say’s starting 11.

1. Retired colonel Tan Peng Ann wrote a book called ‘Create Your Rainbow’, and runs cafes with names like ‘WILD POT’.

2. Dr Ang Yong Guan is also a founding member of the ABC Runners, an interest group about, erm, running.

But what caught my attention was the party’s unusual name. A history of Singaporean party names will reveal that most convey a sense of commitment to action, unity or a political ideology, with words like ‘Labour’, ‘Solidarity’, ‘Democratic’, ‘Socialist’, ‘People’ and ‘Front’ making up the brand. ‘Singaporeans First’ sounds more a cute campaign tagline than a party . PM Lee himself launched a series of ‘Singaporeans First’ policies in 2011. The SDA (Singapore Democratic Alliance) used ‘Singaporeans First’ as a title for their 2011 Manifesto, while rival presidential elect Tan Cheng Bock used ‘Think Singaporeans First’ for his slogan.

There’s also an unrelated ‘Singaporeans First’ Facebook page that already exists, which means there will be some complications with setting up a party page. Unless you call it the ‘Singaporeans-First Party’ on FB, or SFP (Not to be confused with the Singapore Police Force). You also can’t abbreviate it as ‘SF’ and expect to be among the first search results in Google (because of ‘San Francisco”, or ‘Sci-Fi’). ‘Singaporeans First’ is like the ‘Happy’ song of political branding. Twee and overused, and something suspiciously ‘Gilbert Goh’ about it (who had a stint with NSP, by the way).

Anyway, here’s a rundown of the strangest party logos to ever grace our political landscape. Rather a Walls Ice Cream copycat than any of these, I suppose.

1)Singapore Congress’s LADDER. Not much is known about this party other than it was established in 1960 and dissolved 2 years later. It probably focused on career advancements, or building homes.

Step up Singaporeans

2) People’s Liberal Democratic Party’s SPACE SHUTTLE. If you view this clip of founder Ooi Boon Ewe singing a song about voting, you’ll realise that the far reaches of outer space is exactly where this party belongs.

To space and beyond

3) Citizens’ Party. A goddamn STICKMAN. With them in charge, that is exactly what you’ll look like. Hungry and emaciated, with your head detached from what’s left of your body. Even the traffic light green man has a better life than this skeleton.

Stick it to the Man

4) United Democratic Party’s brainteaser. How many triangles do you see in this figure? Also a bit too esoteric for its own good, like the symbol before a portal into a parallel ancient Egyptian universe, where you have to chant in an alien language in order to pass.

From ‘Roof of HDB block in Toa Payoh vandalised’, 7 May 2014, article in CNA

The roof level of a 22-storey Housing and Development Board block was painted with graffiti containing vulgarities and criticism of a political party in an apparent case of vandalism. Pictures of the graffiti were circulated on social media sites on Wednesday morning.

Police said they received a call at 6.47am requesting for assistance at Blk 85A, Toa Payoh Lorong 4. “Upon police’s arrival, it was established that a case of vandalism had occurred at the said location,” a police spokesman said.

A contractor at the scene told Channel NewsAsia that residents had called the Town Council’s 24-hour hotline to complain about the graffiti. The access hatch to the block’s parapet was locked when the police tried to enter the site on Wednesday morning.

According to a Bishan-Toa Payoh Town Council staff member, who did not want to be named, the water tanks on the roof top had not been tampered with. “I don’t know how they managed to get up here. The police are investigating,” said the staff member.

My grandfather rooftop

Graffiti and PAP go together like waffles and honey. Breaking into a MRT depot to spray-paint a train is nothing compared to this aerial spectacle of a middle finger to the ruling party, provided that the culprits abseiled the block rather than break their way onto the roof. (Incidentally, there’s a rooftop bar at Carlton Hotel called GRAFFITI SKY BAR.)

Those in the street art scene label such vandals ‘extreme taggers’, amateurs who risk life and limb to mark territory. One such tagger died from such a stunt hanging from a rope by the 16th floor of a building in Sacramento. Another in the same city fell to his death while trying to mark a bridge. No vandal here has died while pretending to be Tom Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa so far, but we may see the first if this high-rise FUCK PAP mural triggers a spate of copycat HDB tagging. The moniker ‘Mike Cool’ sounds like a 80’s rapper, reminding me more of bright baggy pants and inverted caps than a mohawked punk with a taste for anarchy.

Artists have put roofs to more creative use in other cities, drawing entirely opposite reactions from residents, who view urban graffiti like how they view their child’s first scribblings on the wall. One even proposed to his girlfriend using 5 rooftops as his canvas. If you did this in Singapore, you’d be spending your engagement anniversary in jail, lashes on your back still warm to the touch.

In New York, high rise graffiti has assimilated into the urban landscape, and no one questions how the vandals got up there in the first place. Graffiti artists there are the stuff of fable and magic who sprinkle rainbow fairy dust while you sleep and then disappear before you wake. Maybe it’s because they don’t spray-paint FUCK OBAMA in CAPS all over the place.

Only in Singapore does one see this obsessive urge to deface the Government in public using the ‘language’ of graffiti. Campaign banners in Aljunied GRC, for example, were subject to a blue streak of vandalism in 2011.

PAP, you’ve been Tagged

Then there’s the rampage of digital vandalism that culminated in the hijacking of the Istana website, with the hackers putting up unflattering comments about President Tony Tan. Well that’s one way to get noticed, but a silly risk to take since the Government knows your IP address and all. The tricky part about nabbing rooftop vandals is that the perpetrators are unlikely to be caught in the act by eyewitnesses, and nobody really sneaks up there unless they want to dispose a body in the water tank, have sex, or SUNTAN. Maybe the litterbug-catching CCTVs would have some leads for the Police.

A minor embarrassment for the PAP really, but they should take comfort in knowing that for every dozen pieces of graffiti cursing the government, there’s always that rare, diehard pro-Government fan who would break the law just to declare his love for it. Like so.

UPDATE: ‘Mike Cool’ and his 4 friends were arrested within days of the incident, similar to the speed at which the Cenotaph vandal was captured. I don’t know what they were doing to the 17 year olds in the police van, because they seemed to be in some kind of pain. One of them was allowed access to a lawyer, but denied a gag order because the law ‘protects victims, not accused persons’. The last time a gag order request was rejected was an appeal made on behalf of a certain Cecilia Sue. Meanwhile, another infamous 17 year old’s identity remains gagged to this day, as more than 30 men and counting, their names splashed all over the news, get charged one by one for having underaged sex with the ‘victim’.

4 of them (Boaz Koh, Reagan Tan, Chay Nam Shen, Goh Rong Liang) were alleged to have committed criminal trespass, while David Graaskov has been charged of conspiring to commit vandalism, the latter also accused of ‘removing a reflective vest worth $5 from another rooftop in Toa Payoh. (Teens in vandalism case face more charges, 17 May 2014, ST). Boaz was also playing with a fire extinguisher at the Marina Bay Suites, causing $70 worth of damage to property. Why bother with expert witnesses to solve crimes when you have Instagram? (Boaz and Graaskov have since closed their accounts).

(Chia Ai Tong, William):…My main complaint is that the new logo looks odd and incongruous. Having tried my best to look for beauty, I’m afraid all I can see is a long row made up of two rectangles of different sizes and proportions standing side by side. And why have two logos of the same design, one in grey and the other in red?

(YG Yap): The National Gallery logo is simple. It is the two buildings it is housed in. Good. But it is a little too simple. How about adding a dome on top of the taller box? That will make it look like the former Supreme Court building.

Add an artistic and nostalgic touch by making the lower edge of the dome slightly embedded in the top of the box. That should fix it.

(Lim Fang Kiat):…As if to pre-empt the anticipated slew of brickbats the renaming of the the art gallery will likely engender, National Gallery director Eugene Tan has said: “We want to be known simply as the National Gallery. Gallery itself implies the word art.“

This renaming comes after several names had been bandied about in the past two years or so. These names included National Art Gallery of Singapore (NAGS), The National Art Gallery (TNAG) and National Art Gallery (NAG). These acronyms have been the butt of jokes, but at least the word “art” tells us what the gallery is about.

To have the word “art” removed from this new name when all the proposals in the past have included it is a surprising turnaround and I wonder how much of this decision is due to the need to avoid the negative connotations of the acronym.

It may seem a matter of semantics, but some of us feel that having “art” in the name will provide some semblance of identity for this new gallery, especially when we already have a National Museum, until such time as the name of the National Gallery can stand on its own for the visual arts.

Where Art thou?

Below is my interpretation of how a domed taller box for the much maligned logo would look like, with it overlaying the current facade of the former City Hall and Supreme Court buildings.

The NG Singapore

Now it looks like 2 Duplo blocks or a man with a big nose lying on his back, making it harder for the layperson to, according to the logo description, interpret the design in ‘every imaginable way’. There’s a limit to what you can do with 2 rectangles, really. Corrie Tan of ST thinks the use of boxes smacks of our ‘baggage of over-pragmatism’, and ironically, this ‘geometric abstraction’ of two boxes befits our reputation for being ‘square’. If this were the eighties, we’d have no shame because, as Huey Lewis and the News once sang: It’s HIP to be square. To most people who don’t over-analyse simple geometrtic shapes, it’s just two bloody rectangles.

Asylum lead for the logo project Chris Lee was actually flattered when critics cried ‘My child could do that!’ (‘it speaks of a young child’s purity’, he says, which is really an excuse for ‘lack of imagination’). He also explained that its ‘reductionism reflects the museum’s dynamism and confidence in its vision….It could also represent two platforms, two dialog boxes etc… Art should be a two way conversation’. With a child’s purity. That’s the thing with art, you can explain away rubbish with snappy buzzwords like ‘dynamism’. I could come up with a National Gallery logo in less than 3 minutes, not to mention 3 months as the designers did, using nothing but the letters and symbols on my keyboard and say the following without the slightest hint of satire:

.<National>.(Gallery)

The parentheses symbolise the ‘implicitness’ that defines modern art, the brackets and embracing periods melding the disciplines of art and language into one seamless, universal dynamic whole – an ironic, playful dualism of words being bounded, yet at the same time designed without boundaries in all its emoticonesque, symmetrical simplicity.

Surprisingly, most of our current museum logos don’t consist of anything beyond some fancy fonts. The National Museum has its acronyms floating in mid air like it were suspended in alphabet soup (NMS also stands for Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome.)

The Peranakan Museum has a bold, flowery typeface that wouldn’t look out of place in a Jurong Bird Park logo. If I had to suggest an acronym for this, I’d go with PAM.

And there’s SAM, which is an exercise in stark black-and-white minimalism, which you can also replicate using Microsoft Word. Yes, you don’t even need WORDART for this.

The only one with a graphic is the Asian Civilisations Museum, which depicts the Empress Place building’s facade casting a shadow. Nothing Asian about its ‘neo Palladian’ style at all. Its acronym ACM sounds like an insurance company by the way.

Those who look beyond the logo complain about the dropping of ‘Art’ from the former NAG, or more bizarrely, NAGA (The additional A is part of the word ‘GAllery’). Naga is also the name of a serpent deity in Hindu and Buddhist mythology, one that would resonate with anyone who plays World of Warcraft. TNAG or TNAGS look like a typo horror dying for the autocorrect treatment to TANGS (the shopping centre). I’m not sure if the new acronym NG is any better, which not only spells out a common Singaporean surname, but can be an abbreviation of ‘No Good’, in reference to bad takes when shooting a film, while NGS resembles an acronym for a government hospital or a convent girls’ school. Personally I’d prefer NAG to TNAG any day, the latter sounding like an annoying adolescent rapper.

Contrary to director Eugene Tan’s assertion, not all ‘Galleries’ imply art. The Singapore Maritime Gallery exhibits stuff that allows you to play a Captain or a ‘Matey’ for a day. The Sustainable Singapore Gallery shows you how the Marina Barrage works. The HDB Gallery shows you how living space has shrunk over time (probably also the LEAST visited gallery ever). There’s a KINDNESS Gallery devoted to Singa the Courtesy Lion. You can even have a gallery of ICE CREAM. In our context, a ‘gallery’ is just a general space to showcase stuff, whether it’s artifacts, toys, photography, paintings, food or campaign paraphernalia. So don’t be surprised if you invite someone for a trip to the National Gallery, the response you get is ‘Gallery of WHAT?’ To which you’ll reply ‘Erm, ART?’. And then you’ve already wasted 1 second of your life explaining as such.

If naming and logos aren’t problematic enough, some have even opposed the use of the existing building facade to house a modern art gallery, that the stuffy English ‘neo-classic style’ just isn’t ‘shocking enough’ for an institution like NAG. The building needs to be ‘dynamic, contemporary and confident’ like its logo and ‘Akzidenz-Grotesk’ typeface. It needs to ‘push boundaries’, something which the logo has failed to do, and rival the Art Science Museum’s lotus dome in terms of instant iconic recognisability. If it weren’t already too late, they could have come up with an architectural style that shouts ‘playful’ and ‘geometric abstraction’ at the same time.

Something like this, perhaps.

The National Gallery logo is simple. It is the two buildings it is housed in. Good. But it is a little too simple.

How about adding a dome on top of the taller box? That will make it look like the former Supreme Court building.

Add an artistic and nostalgic touch by making the lower edge of the dome slightly embedded in the top of the box. That should fix it.